I wonder if anyone out there has any bright suggestions on appropriate
hearing instruments for the following client?
Subject is a 58 year old female medical doctor, no family history of
hearing problems, no tinnitus, no vertigo, no surgery to ears etc. She
is experiencing difficulty hearing quiet spoken people, particularly in
meetings etc. She uses a Bosch amplified stethescope at work which works
well.
Her audiogram is the same in both ears - pure tone thresholds are, 25dB
at 250, 30 dB at 500, 35dB at 1k, 40 dB at 2k, 30dB at 3k, 35dB at 4k,
10dB at 6k and 10dB at 8k. Sensori-neural loss. She does not suffer from
recruitment. With speech discrimination testing using AB(s) word lists
she obtained 96% correct in both ears at 60dB.
I initially tried her with Binaural Bernafon programmable CIC 400
instruments in the hope that she would be able to continue using her
stethescope by using CIC format. However the high frequency
amplification was too great with these instruments and the circuit noise
was also distracting to her. She also had difficulty with the
stethescope as the instruments were not true CIC's due to fairly narrow
canals.
We then tried a Starkey CIC with the 5AE faceplate on the right ear.
This was a neater fit but she was still unhappy about the circuit noise
- amplifier used was K amp.
She is really keen to improve her hearing, will not consider BTE.
I look forward to your comments.
Thanks for your help.
Gary Holland
--
The Hearing Care Centre
Ponteland
Newcastle upon Tyne
UK
